About New York; Putting New Amusement in a Tired, Withered Park

By DAN BARRY

Published: April 19, 2006

YOU catch a glimpse of it as you zip along the Belt Parkway, a brief blur of Brooklyn expressly reserved for the suspension of disbelief. This is not the grand and glittering Coney Island, but its much smaller cousin, distantly related through the shared gene that used to be called mirth.

The place seems so tiny in Coney Island context that it looks as though it sprang from some Barnum starter kit. For many years, the smallness suited children; from the top of the modest Ferris wheel, they could always see their parents below, waving, nearly within reach, here at the Nellie Bly Amusement Park.

But the business of amusement does not operate in the fantasy world it strives to create. Costs rise, rides break down, magicians age.

Last fall, the Romano family, which opened the park some 40 years ago, notified the city that it had lost the go in its go-kart. The time had come for someone else to tap a wand on these three acres of city-owned land, squeezed between the parkway and a Department of Sanitation depot.

Enter Martin and Marc Garin, a father and son with decades of experience in amusement. They promised to restore the tired park's luster with new rides, improved food service and a more appealing atmosphere. The project would take a couple of years to complete, but they promised to have part of the park ready by Memorial Day.

''This is a transition year,'' said the white-haired Martin Garin, who declines to give his age, as though saying he is 74 might neutralize some Neverland ingredient. ''We're opening, for continuity, but it will not be reflective of the way we operate.''

Imagine that you have just assumed the lease of longtime tenants who have left a few things behind; a broken bumper car here, a gargantuan teacup there. Imagine, too ,that you are scheduled to have a Memorial Day party for who-knows-how -many guests. The Garins don't have to imagine.

For the last month, they have been cleaning, fixing, and trying to decide what stays and what goes in a place they hope to rename Adventurers Amusement Park. While nearly every corner of the property conjures a cherished childhood memory for someone, they have little time for sentiment. Summertime looms.

Yesterday morning, the Garins led a tour of sorts around a fantasy world not of their making. It began in the park's narrow parking lot, where two sparkling-gold tubs lay on their sides -- remnants of some dismantled ride.

''I think this was called 'Tubs of Fun,' '' said Marc Garin, 42 and bald. ''Probably made back in the 60's.''

''We're taking them away,'' his father said.

They walked over six painted home plates, telltale signs of the batting cage where children once engaged in stare-downs with a mechanical Clemens. The netting was gone, and so were the pitching machines, but some balls were scattered on the ground like decayed fruit.

They walked into the old Capt'n Video arcade. Under its buckling roof were corralled 30 merry-go-round horses, a few pink elephants, and a couple of baby dinosaurs, all looking incomplete without a child upon their backs.

SOON, the Garins said, soon.

But those two Skee-Toss games in the corner would no longer give up nine balls for a quarter, at least not in this park.

And no one here would again wrestle the horns of the out-of-order El Toro bull game, which measured one's strength on a sexist scale, from ''Forget it'' and ''Pushover'' to ''Superman'' and ''Champion.''

''I'm planning to demo this building next year,'' Marc Garin said.

Gone, too, and replaced, will be the snack building, the bumper car building, and a few other structures, including a fun house that didn't look like much fun and a haunted house that now looked even more haunted.

Some parts of the Nellie Bly were already gone. The petting zoo, for example, and the boat ride, where children navigated choppy contained waters. Only a shadow in pavement marked the route of miniature fire engines that once rushed to conflagrations burning in imagination.

Shuttered amusement parks, whether closed for winter or for good, can conjure the dangerously deceiving emotion of nostalgia. Sadness can set in, like rot.

But in the case of this amusement park, the story is joyous: a small corner of Brooklyn will continue to release children of the burden of reality, if only for an hour or two.

A disclaimer on the old fun house said it best: ''Nellie Bly not responsible for lost articles.''

Photo: Marc Garin and his father, Martin, at the Nellie Bly Amusement Park in Coney Island yesterday. (Photo by Keith Meyers/The New York Times)